The National Court rules that it is not competent to investigate Netanyahu
The judge of the National Court Antonio Piña has rejected and filed the complaint filed against the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and several senior army officers for the assault and boarding of the boat. Madleenintegrated into the international civil mission Freedom Flotilla bound for Gaza, on June 8.
The judge’s order, which is based on the report of the Prosecutor’s Office contrary to the admission of the complaint, considers that the facts do not fall under the jurisdiction of the National Court due to the lack of jurisdiction of the Spanish courts in accordance with Organic Law 1/2014 of universal jurisdiction, and refers to its prosecution in the International Criminal Court (ICC), where Netanyahu is already being investigated for alleged crimes against humanity.
The complaint was filed by the Spanish Sergio Toribio, a member of the Freedom Flotilla in Spain, and by the Committee of Solidarity with the Arab Cause and was directed, in addition to Netanyahu, against the Minister of Defense, Israel Katz; Vice Admiral David Saar Salama, the senior officers of Shayetet Unit 13, in charge of the boarding, and against the former commander and current spokesman for the Israeli army, Daniel Hagari.
These facts, according to the complainants, constituted a crime against humanity (with illegal detention and deportation) and another crime against the people and property protected in the event of armed conflict. “The content of the complaint prevents the attribution of knowledge of it to the Spanish jurisdiction as the requirements of article 23.4 a) and b) of the Organic Law of the Judiciary do not meet and we must invoke the prosecution of these crimes, at the present time to the International Criminal Court, governed by the Rome Statute, ratified by Spain, which is permanent and autonomous,” concludes the instructor.
The reform of the so-called law of justice or universal jurisdiction, sponsored by the PP Government in 2014, “limits”, as the judge recalls, the limits of Spanish jurisdiction to investigate crimes committed outside Spain, being those against humanity and crimes of war or armed conflict, “those that have been removed from the principle of universal justice, except in extraordinary or very rare cases.”
This is why the magistrate refuses to admit the complaint and invokes the prosecution of these crimes at the CFI, which precisely in November 2024 issued arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and his former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, as those most responsible for the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip since at least October 8, 2023.
According to the complaint, during the boarding “drones, tear gas, and non-lethal weapons were used and the twelve crew members were arbitrarily detained, all unarmed civilians, without prior warning or court order, in the absence of any military threat.” The text denounced that the detainees – including activists such as Greta Thunberg (Sweden), Rima Hassan (France) and Thiago Ávila (Brazil) – were forcibly transferred to Israel, held incommunicado, stripped of their belongings and subjected to attempts at forced indoctrination, with threats of being forced to watch propaganda material. the ship Madleen It transported food, medicine and medical supplies destined for the Palestinian civilian population, in the context of a blockade classified as illegal by the United Nations. (Efe)
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